Bruce Bisset: Locked beach gate a dodgy deal

Seems to me that someone needs to come clean about exactly what the issues are around public access to Ocean Beach and set forth a plan to resolve them, because simply gating and locking the carpark without genuinely good cause is not acceptable.

As it stands, the public are being penalised for Hastings District Council's abject failure - over several decades - to legally resolve permanent access rights to the beach.

And it's not as if this hadn't been bumped up the agenda of late. Andy Lowe's plans for a new seaside town there - thankfully now discarded - identified access as a major hurdle, which ostensibly the council was working hard to overcome.

That was five years ago. Yet the so-called public road continues to run informally through private land; thus access remains at the mercy of private interest, as this gate fiasco proves.

Now, I don't blame the local hapu in control of Pukepuke Tangiora Estate - the legal owner of the land beneath part of the road - for wanting a fair deal from HDC.

And I appreciate that they've been in and out of court and haggling over costs with the council for a long time without, as far as I can see, ever being offered a deal that was transparently fair. But to concoct a story about vandalism and abuse by overnight campers as an excuse to suddenly shut off access is likewise not playing fair.

At least it appears concocted, for other locals including the Surf Club - which sits on a council reserve affected by the lock-out - have reportedly seen little or no evidence of such abuse.

So on the face of it, it looks like this is a resumption of the push-and-shove game both sides have been playing interminably - at the public's expense.

It's high time both sides got real about this and sorted it out once and for all.

The fact is that the unspoilt wild beauty of Ocean Beach is a regional treasure which should be able to be accessed and enjoyed by everyone, day or night.

If that means we ratepayers have to stump up to ensure permanent access, then let's offer a fair price and be done with it.

Equally, I suggest the trustees of Pukepuke Tangiora Estate need to extend some grace to the public at large and be willing to agree to a long-term arrangement, instead of the itsy-bitsy three-year lease currently being reviewed.

I appreciate the trustees do not want to sell outright but this issue will be a thorn that may be held against them unless a pragmatic solution is reached.

Bear in mind the only other option is costly and environmentally damaging - the alternative route being negotiated, bought, bulldozed and laid.

Realistically, no one wants that.

The crazy part about this is that apart from the $50,000 HDC has already had to fork out to the former owners of Haupouri Station for not being able to legally extend the road (in return for their gifting of the surf club reserve) because of this access issue, the contract for managing, locking and unlocking the new gates will reputedly cost several times what the council currently pays to lease the access in the first place.

I wholeheartedly agree that Ocean Beach needs protecting, and if one ramification of legalising public access is the possibility of further development then that needs to be sorted and curtailed in advance, though my understanding of the recent plan change is that sufficient restrictions are now in place.

Similarly, if there really is good reason to restrict vehicular access beyond the carpark then some other control measures need to be implemented that still allow the reserve and surf club to be used after dark.

Certainly, I wouldn't want to get a call from my son - a keen surfer - saying he'd inadvertently stayed out too long and was locked in, and could I find a way to come get him? I can tell you now, the lock would not endure.

If there's a potential fly in the ointment in terms of the foreshore and seabed legislation that requires further compromise, so be it.

But a locked gate is not compromise.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.